& you make the leaves of grass & of the trees
speak for themselves! great scald of demos i
am yours oh master bending down to me! like
a tree of man & of men (mighty rivers flowing
through your poems & the day like a dripping
tap & i a drum that tap will fill with a restless
spirit stranded here beneath the reeds on the
river's bank & there we shall walk my prophet
after you have dunked my head & blessed it
made me drink the brown river waters silted
by imperial drones the fury of our resistance
master! none shall stand before us (tho none
be in danger from our gentle hands apostles
walking together our hands brushing gently
the grasses rushes our secret lives rising up
like nations to be counted among the new &
old this new democracy! of our own making!
bard of wisdom & of long summer days alone
in libraries lit by a stained glass sun reading
from your poems arrayed in battle formations
line after line of soldiers' language & orders
tho not from on high the master's commands
we cannot hear for the rushing sound of that
river finally leaping free of drought (old grey
father of my new religion one of men & words
that flow like rivers of milk from the trunks of
she-oaks river gums as swarms of bees attack
pollen seas & our fingers sticky with that love
Category: Leaves of Glass (page 6 of 6)
In late 2007 I received a grant from Arts Victoria to write a series of poems based on correspondence between Australian poet Bernard O’Dowd and Walt Whitman. The results were published as Leaves of Glass by Sydney-based publisher Puncher and Wattmann in 2013.
summers angles false starts hits trail a fuselage of painted mist that leaves & seasons glue assist suspension under glass portraits snails delay hollowly all along convex carpets of autumns soft crackle as the lens sends back fortitude in the shapes of hell winter kills the leaves of glass passing from time to liquidity an abstract class a new botanics snake eyes in an inkwell timbre these yes more shaded areas where spring sells dynamite & downtime sodden with memory engines rhyme automated slicers of yesterday lines formed by horizons clutch as rain drops soft pleasant bells pealing sentience from mechanics tending to their hydraulic shifts whose stare disrupts the unguent on the sky made up like drought these more yes besides them the wheel was rounder in those days questions served a function yet the day he decided to drive away shards upended ceaseless sharp a hollow cloud hovered over him slow as seasons eaves or darts beneath roads plovers throttled subtle crickets bat migrations dopplering their fearless trill besides this ecstatic twilights rate highly glints in a web of sugar strings times changer shellbursts oblivion to barriers walls transparent objects whirr with uninterrupted mass gravity steps on painted glasses coats the shining bottles empty of air